The Effects of 333

Abstract Dragon; 2008

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Credit where credit's due: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have made far better music than either the Dandy Warhols or Brian Jonestown Massacre, but like the subjects of Dig!, whatever success they've achieved in musical terms has always felt like accidental background noise to their preferred day job: a continually futile pursuit to be anywhere near as badass as they'd like you to think they are. Though their four studio albums have stuck to revivalist modern rock and ranged from competent to highly enjoyable, BRMC have ran through as many overt, leathery production appliqués (premature JAMC revivalism, "Tobacco Road" blooze, combative sophomore slumping) as major label deals, giving credence to the idea that they're more journeymen than firebrands. This sort of context is important in regards to The Effects of 333, which is the kind of uncompromising and severe sonic shift that only works when a band has a lot more to lose, or at the very least an onerous record contract to fulfill. Instead, 333 is, no shit, a background noise record released on the band's own label. In the band's own words: "no apologies, no lyrics, no regrets, just abstract." And really, no indication that anyone outside of reviewers could be inspired to listen to it multiple times.

333 would be senseless enough were it just typical BRMC songs stripped of vocals, and at least in that form, it could serve as a bizarre curio for their most dedicated fans. There are a pair of tracks-- "A Twisted State" or "And With This Comes"-- that sound like standard BRMC. On those tracks, reverbed guitars howl while lonesome acoustics strum inside the margin; it sounds pleasant enough to score the ruminative point on MTV's "Made"where the subject questions her commitment to cheerleading camp. Now imagine that going on for almost five minutes at a time with no real melodic vehicle or dynamics, and you're in touch with the unfathomable context in which these are the high points.

333 often sounds like a guitar band clumsily trying to recreate Fennesz. Forget Black Sea: Most of the music here is along the lines of the Dead Sea minus the depth-- a salty and motionless murk.Occasionally, a potentially intriguing touch filters in, such as the cicada-like chirps of "A Sad State" or the coruscated feedback swells that punctuate "Still No Answer". But they never become much more than touches tacked onto seemingly endless bouts of detuned guitar roughage. Even the most stubbornly motivated headphones listen reveals little in the way of layering or detail that might suggest how this could possibly manage to be three years in the making. One saving grace: This is almost certainly a one-off rather than a new direction.

Too loud to be ambient; too polished to work in the realm of noise, the cruelest confirmation of The Effects of 333's failure to be a defiantly alienating trainwreckis that it's hardly unlistenable. Unlike previous 00s low points like Liz Phair and Travistan, 333 isn't a new direction. Hell, it's even conceivably admirable considering how electronic music that's more ambient than song-oriented is still somewhat off limits for rock bands, particularly ones with the commercial ambitions of BRMC. But the full-fledged commitment of 333 instead exposes a band way over its head, overcompensating for an inability to integrate fresh ideas into a framework that, from the sounds of Baby 81, needed them in the worst way. Quite a year we're already having here-- while it'll be surprising if we get a better record than Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2009, the odds are even longer that we'll see one as utterly pointless as the insanely inessential The Effects of 333.